Elections rule the day in Carbon: Split tickets favor GOP in state, national contests; Matheson holds on

In the battle between Red and Blue for state and national offices, color us mauve.

Carbon County voted to keep its Democratic congressional representative and its District 69 state house representative, but went Republican in all other partisan races. There is evidence of considerable ticket-splitting, given that only 1,336 of the 5,316 votes cast were for a straight-party ballot. Of those, nearly 60 percent were for the Democratic slate and 37 percent Republican.

Matheson wins

Incumbent Democrat Jim Matheson won fewer than half of the 16 counties in the Second Congressional District, but still managed to out-poll challenger Morgan Philpot by close to 11,000 votes, 116,375 to 105,441. Carbon went overwhelmingly for Matheson, 3,551 to 1,432, and Salt Lake gave him 77,468 to 43,670.

However, he was clobbered by more than two-to-one in the Republican strongholds of Utah and Washington counties and trailed in seven other counties.

GOP takes senate, governor races

In the race for the open U.S. Senate seat, Carbon County joined 28 other counties in Utah by giving the majority of votes to Republican Mike Lee. Democrat Sam Granato fared better here than elsewhere, however, garnering 2,212 votes for Lee's 2,552. That is 50.16 percent for the winner. Statewide, Lee got more than 61 percent of the vote.

Carbon County also gave a majority of its votes to the Republican incumbents Gary Herbert and Greg Bell for governor and lieutenant governor. Herbert and Bell garnered 54.72 percent of the vote while the bipartisan ticket of Peter Corroon (D) and Sheryl Allen got 40.86 percent. Statewide, the victory margin was 64 percent to 32 percent.

Republican Patrick Painter retained his seat in District 67 of the Utah House of Representatives by a margin of more than three-to-one overall. However, his margin of victory in Carbon County was narrower than in other counties. Carbon voters gave him 906 votes (52.49 percent) to Democrat Scott Parkins' 749 (43.4 percent).

Democrat Christine Watkins cruised to victory virtually unopposed in the District 69 race. Nevertheless, she did not get 100 percent of the votes cast. There were 51 write-in ballots cast for other candidates out of a preliminary tally of 2,863.

In the non-partisan race for State School Board, Carbon joined the rest of Region 14 in voting for Dixie Lee Allen over Johny Thayne, 2,507 to 1,362.